Diana Gabaldon Quotes

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

If I had my druthers, I wouldn't have anyone's words in my script but my own, but if you want complete autonomy, just stick to novels.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

I write as if I were drunk. It is a process of intuition rather than placing myself above my story like a puppeteer pulling strings. For me, it's a scary, chaotic process over which I have little control. Words demand other words, characters resist me.

I can't imagine what it would be like to write in a relaxed state. I'm going to be writing some stories for my own interest. I want to experiment with different things and see if I can approach writing with much less control and in a better psychological state. It will be like breaking out of a straitjacket.

Within reason, I can write what I like and spend as long doing it as is necessary. That is a luxury beyond price.

It's hard, because when you talk about process or your characters ruling your narrative, it sounds like you have no control, but obviously you're ultimately the author, so you do have control.

I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.

I always write the script by myself.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

No one touches me when I write my story, unless I hire you to or I allow you to.

I never really like it when other writers talk about coming in behind people and rewriting.

I usually do my writing in a very nice room, my studio, which is in the attic of our house in Wisconsin. But the nice thing about writing is that I can do it in many places. So sometimes I'll write in coffee shops.

This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.

Most of my writing takes place at a cramped desk in a cramped apartment, so whenever I get to write on a train or make notes on a road trip, it has an entirely different cadence. And I can remember specific writing sessions while on a train through beautiful countryside in a way I can remember almost nothing else.

I really enjoy the writing process because I can do it from my house. I can create these characters and take them in the different directions that I want to take them. You have a lot of freedom as a writer.

I'm totally in control of this tiny, tiny world right there at the typewriter.

I like to write at home a lot.

When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want.

I write what I write.

Being an author is always like being a well-run dictatorship - it's all one person speaking.

When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours.

I don't think there's a difference between writing for a newspaper or magazine and doing a chapter in a book.

Real writers - serious writers with serious subjects, who earn their living at it - all seem to write in small rooms with that knotty-pine 1974 look on the top-floor rear of their houses. Rooms with views.